Synopsis
The circle of life turns in unexpected ways.
Earth Mother awakes with the dawn. As she walks the land, swims the seas, and climbs the mountains, nurturing all of creation, she comes across Man, Frog, and Mosquito. They each give her thanks for nature’s bounty,
yet can’t help but give her advice about making their lives better. Everybody’s got an opinion, it seems, and Earth Mother is amused when it becomes clear that the circle of life is not without a healthy dose of cosmic humor.
Leo and Diane Dillon lend their formidable talents to Ellen Jackson’s original folktale about the unexpected and sometimes humorous ways that life is interconnected.
Publishers Weekly
A spare text and stunning artwork introduce Earth Mother, an elegant African-American woman dressed in intricately patterned robes, who keeps watch over all creation. After awakening with the dawn, she "walked across the land singing a morning song [and] placed a piece of summer in a flower's seed." For her purposeful wanderings in the African savannah, she wears "a robe fringed with falling rain," and the Dillons portray her replenishing the dry land with water. Later, they paint her Zeus-like, hurling thunderbolts from a mountain peak. In her travels, she encounters three beings who reveal nature's cycle in a kind of refrain. Man thanks Earth Mother for the frogs he catches for breakfast but complains of the mosquito's bites ("If there were more frogs and no mosquitoes... this world would be perfect"); a frog, grateful for the mosquitoes that fill his belly, grumbles about Man (without whom "this world would be perfect"); and a mosquito fears the frog but is grateful for Man, on whom she feasts. For each, the square framed paintings depict Earth Mother listening patiently; finally she bids good night to "her children everywhere.... And the world, in its own way, was perfect." Rendered in watercolor and colored pencils and featuring an effectively muted palette, the Dillons' illustrations capture the spiritual aura of Jackson's graceful words. Large-scale images of flora native to the habitats flank the depictions of Earth Mother's activities, further underscoring nature's bounty and beauty. Ages 3-7. (Sept.) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.